The Waters of Myinnkyun's Harbor
The waters of Myinnkyun’s harbor are deep and clear. A pony standing upon the rickety wooden dock feels as though they walk across a high bridge that spans an immense gulf. Even at noon, the burning tropical sun cannot plumb the harbor’s depths – sight fades past a few yards, past the dock’s pilings, past the schools of silver fish that flicker and flee in the space of a breath. All else vanishes in an emerald fog.
The waters are filled with every manner of lost thing. Cargo dropped by careless stevedores. Driftwood carried by the tides. The rotting remains of the schooner Venture, sunk in a summer hurricane. An ivory pen, flung by the mayor in a fit of pique. Rotting scraps of thatch housing. Crabs who poke at all these things, and make within them homes.
There are bones in here as well. Two colonies’ worth of bones. Two hundred lives, brought here by fate and fortune, by dreams of warm sand and clear skies, by the allure of salt water and the heady promise that here, on this shore, they will find what eluded them in all their other ports.
Hope makes ponies invincible. It is what gave them the strength to conquer the world.
But here, in Myinnkyun’s sheltered harbor, encompassed on the east and west by tall cliffs that curl around the port like a mother’s arms, nothing remains that resembles hope. There are only shattered houses, broken and leaning against each other for support, and a long picket wall that once protected the colony from the endless jungle beyond. Now it is gap-toothed and ruined, piled high with sand and beach sedge, and with every passing year another piece of it falls and is swallowed by the dunes, and soon only the crabs will remember it exists as they knock against its buried timbers with their claws, making burrows, putting it at last to some better use than its creators.
* * *
Can a town dream?
A town breathes and grows. Towns live and die. A town’s ponies can dream, and what is a town? It is not a spot of earth or collection of buildings or a point on a map; a town is its ponies. And it must be agreed that the whole can do all the same things as its parts.
So Myinnkyun slumbers in the tropical sun, and if its ponies still dream in their watery cradle, then Myinnkyun must dream as well.
* * *
There is a great house on a hill in Myinnkyun, looking out over the waters of the bay. It is porticoed and gabled, and along the roof is a walkway from which the house’s master sometimes stood and watched the sea, as though she were a captain, her house a ship, and this walkway a crow’s nest. From here Peridot watched the storms, and kept careful count of the boats laden with her treasure as they pulled into port.
The front door has fallen off its hinges, and the beach has crept inside. The floorboards have gone gray and dry. Sand sieves between them in dark lines that run the length of the room. The walls, made up in plaster and board by ponies too stubborn to adapt to the tropical weather, have long since rotted away, and only decaying beams remain to support the upper floors.
There is a set of stairs leading higher. They are weak, and only a foal or pegasus can use them anymore.
* * *
The Customs House was the largest building in Myinnkyun. It stood guard at the end of the docks, ready to intercept cargo as it came ashore and claim the crown’s share of tax. The mayor lived on the second floor, and the guard kept their barracks in a long row house to the side, and it was here that ponies made their final stand.
The Customs House is cinders now. Black stumps protrude from the gray sand, discoloring it with their shedding ash. Years of storms have swept the rest away.
Sometimes the wind carries away the sand, revealing bits of trash amidst the ruin: a guard’s spearhead, a minotaur’s nose ring, a foal’s coral rattle. Scraps of paper that somehow survived the fire, filled with ledger lines accounting Myinnkyun’s profits.
In time the winds return, and sand consumes these things again.
* * *
Beyond the fragmentary wall, beyond a hundred yards of bare sand, the jungle rises like a wave. It washes from the mountains in the distant island’s heart, lapping here at the edge of pony civilization. The shadows are verdant and thick within.
To the ponies of Myinnkyun, the jungle was the wellspring of all their fears. Its shadows held every manner of secret and nightmare, monsters that lurked beneath their windowsills and scratched at their doors. They thought, in their folly, that the jungle held their doom. They barricaded themselves against its darkness, and gave free reign to the darkness in their hearts.
Now, the jungle echoes with distant thunder. Drums pound out a rhythm in the night, and the orange light of a thousand bonfires paints the clouds with false evening glow. Laughter, songs, howls all spill out from the native revelry.
And Pony Island belongs once more to the first people.
* * *
In Peridot’s home, on the second floor, a bed still sits neatly made.
The sheets are crusted with salt blown in from the bay. They are frozen in place, and Peridot, who slept on the floor at the foot of her own bed, would smile to see them so preserved.
The window beside the bed is open. Not broken – open. And on the windowsill are rough gouges where a pony’s hoof has scraped. A single rosy feather, the same color as the dawn, is still lodged in the window’s track, where a careless pegasus lost it in his hurried haste.
* * *
In the waters of Myinnkyun’s bay, two hundred souls lie dreaming. They dream of love, and friendship, and the hope that brought them to this distant shore.
They who are dead no longer dream of fear. They have forgotten the murder, and why anypony would ever want to kill.. The warm water cradles them, and their dreams are the ocean, and slowly they join with it. They are at peace.
Peridot, and Littlemoth, and Dawn Patrol, and Moonstruck, and all the other ponies of Myinnkyun, who bound their fates together in life, now reside together here, at the bottom of this vast bay. And when all of life’s dreams lay before them as a feast, they do not bother to remember the last days of Pony Island, for
there is nothing else
which could matter less
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Damn...
What could have happened, I wonder.
If only these were actual places!
ah cool another lost city love it like always
So very good. Now to read the inspiration!
Do cities dream?
I got the idea for that from Gaiman when I posed the question in Night. I thought it was a deliciously unsettling question.
Huh. A rather modern/recent lost city, eh?
I was wondering if this'd make an appearance here!
Congrats on another excellent chapter. There are a lot of nice touches in here. I particularly like how the Aristotelian elements get invoked: ruins in the water, and water imagery tied to the jungle; the ashes of the the Customs House, and the bonfires of the minotaurs; artifacts revealed by the wind, and the casual mentions of breath early in the piece. I don't know if you intended much with them, but they provide a nice framework for elaborating the descriptions and keeping them fresh.
The ending, emphasizing the futility of those last days, is also really nice—and it feels very true to the setting. To me, it invokes the classically tragic aspect here. Myinnkyun was always doomed, and its doom was written in the corruption of its ideals as much as the ponies being "too stubborn to adapt". The colony was built, destroyed, and refounded. The fact that it fell apart again can't come as a surprise, and without surprise, what is there to regret?
I was listening to this while I was reading, and I must say it made the experience all the more unnerving.
Anyways, another brilliant chapter to the Lost Cities series. Thank you.
Mmm~ Another lovely chapter.
Not quite in the same vein as the others, being of newer make. However, it is fitting, no? A town of dreams and inspirations. Great for development, but only too quickly lost to the ravenges of time. How dreams so swiftly fade compared.
A land of opulence, its bitter core still found, is it naught but dreams when realized, and lasts for eons? It shall last until the core is found, and still on as a shell of its former self.
A land of power, and and its display, is it not but realization of fear, and trying to protect? It shall last until the fear is forgotten, and on then until it too is forgotten.
A land of solitude, and its quite reservation, is it not but the desire for the dream to last? It shall last, but the dream will change and leave, until all is what it resembled, a faint and fleeting dream.
And there is a land of peace, and happiness. It too, shall fade when the dream of harmony is forgotten, for it can rarely be restored, for all must want for it.
So how among these could dreams still last? Dreams without an anchor, without purchase, without realization? They shan't, for they shall fade away, on a whim, just as they were built.
Lovely story this.
6480172 That's why I built my city out of solid neutronium instead of dreams! Much more stable!
6478813 I comprehend it just fine as a material sphere of silicate rock with a primarily nickle-iron core floating around an average star.
Mythology is for people who are too STUPID to understand cold, hard fact!
God told me so last night in a dream..
And then the Spanish Inquisition invaded....
6481501 Just watch out for replicators.
a very good chapter! you must have really liked this series of poems to write a chapter about it's location.
I'll head there for further reading
6484141 I have bug spray for those...
A story, lost and found, like history, by mans greed.
How can we but leave note of our passage, if even our footsteps as we watch are erased by those of power demanding deep foundations for ephemeral works upon shallow soil.
I apologise. I have a mild headache.
I shouldn't be surprised any more that you can write like this, but... wow. This is astonishing stuff. One of those pieces I feel privileged to have read. Part of me wants to try the Challenge for myself, but most of me knows how hard it is to make something look as effortless as you have here. Maybe it'll happen one day, but until then I'll feast on the riches you've created here. Beautiful and inspiring.
6642286 I have the story outlined... just need the time and state of mind to write it.
Otherwise, it'll end up like this...
Story in my mind...
40.media.tumblr.com/77fc2f3ac0cb73c6a2de2a52f2bc7234/tumblr_inline_nvi6pnun231rs1zzn_540.jpg
Writing down the story...
41.media.tumblr.com/c37ba48d8ffabde705617bbafbb23b57/tumblr_inline_nvi6qeqG6p1rs1zzn_540.png
You are an brilliant author the desciptons are so well thought out and descriptive I love it and you have inspired me this day to make a new group
Since Luna is also mentioned in this quite frequently alongside her sister, should she not have a tag as well?
Very Lovecraftian. gives me the shivers.
This might be the best MLP fanfiction I've ever read in concern to how the world works, the history, and explaining ruins themselves. I read the first chapter myself, and had to share. I then proceeded to read the first chapter, and the rest of this story, to my mother. Out loud. She likes MLP as well, but tends to stay away from fanfiction. She is just as blown away by this story as I am.
The description was amazing, the detail and descriptions were exquisite. As you built layer upon layer of detail, the cities and structures you described became real. Everything was layered and different, and very little was blatantly obvious. You refused to smash your readers in the face with exact fates, tragic figures, and the like. Instead, you allowed the readers to draw their own conclusions, while keeping enough detail for everyone to at least guess at something similar.
I supremely hope this isn't the last exposition piece you write for the land of Equestria. You make the world seem as real as our own, and that is a feat I've seen few accomplish. Thank you for your gift, and happy writing.
Now this is world building.
1st Story
I think I know why it’s referred to as the “Heartspire”.
A hauntingly beautiful tale about a civilization so in love with the notion of its own superiority and beauty that it ended up destroying itself, or just as likely, was destroyed by something greater. The depiction grew more gruesome the higher one ascended. It begins peacefully in the garden, displaying a race cultured and civilized, who used their magic for good. Climb higher and you’ll see that they shared their wisdom with “lesser” races. Higher still and you start to see something less altruistic. It’s a paradox really. The higher you go, the lower they become until you reach the tallest point to see just how far they’ve fallen.
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
2nd Story
Not as detailed or as dark, but full of history. If only those pegasi kept better bookkeeping.
3rd Story
Must have been magnificent once. I feel we keep going further back in time with each story. You can clearly see the reference to the Heartspire in this story. Though why the unis began sacrificing their cousins is lost to history, I would think. I really like how we get different cultural viewpoints for each race. One favors extravagance, the other practicality, the other rustic.
4th Story
Nothing lasts forever. How I wish I could stroll through those magnificent boulevards. Disregarding The Plaza of the Moon reflects how Luna became so disenfranchised by her secondary role. Again a walk through history.
5TH STORY
Is it okay if I consider this canon?
6th Story
Hm, I was kind of hoping the son would bring back something good, not slaughter his family.
7th Story
Okay.
All of it, perfect.
I'd love to leave a thoughtful comment, but honestly, all I can think of to say is "Wow."
8347256 You know, this pretty much sums up mine.
Just, so moving and evocative, hinting at what caused the downfalls at times, leaving in twists to ponder, laying out so much feeling and meaning, all while.. just describing ruins. It's simply masterful.
Where did you learn to write like this?
Okay this has got to be one of the two best depictions of pony history I've found since joining the community a little over a year ago. The other is a short series of videos by the appropriately named "Historical Equestria" who through the guise of a unicorn in the employ of the Canterlot Archives gave accounts of Ponykind's history from an ancient time when they were more like the ponies here in RL to the first of the alicorns, discords reign and how little factual information remains, all the way through to essentially where we picked up at the beginning of S1. She also started a series on Zebra history and had plans for other races, but sadly to the best of my knowledge suffered a bad case of burn-out and the historical documentaries were left on a indefinite hiatus. Anyways, I am über-convinced that between CiG and HE, we could get something that could almost be seen as a plausible history book by actual historians. I would totally buy such a book if it ever came into print.
What genre is this?
9715791
Hm, fictional documentary? Nothing standard, anyway. Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities is the closest real-world analogue.
9716146
It's neat~ Seems to consist solely of worldbuilding.
Sufficiently unusual that I rather expected one of the final chapters to wrap everything together and tie the mysteries together into one or two events or something. There was a little bit of that, I suppose, in the callback to where the unicorns and earth ponies came from in the first chapter.
9994987
Rome fell after hundreds of years of decline, after a drastic change of government, and several mad and/or tyrannical dictators.
Learn yer history.
This was one of the most unique stories i've ever read. I'm quite jealous you portrayed the idea of "Environmental storytelling" in literary format so well. The out-of-the-ordinary-ness is admirable, and experimental works are my FAVORITE in any medium - this being no exception.
Being the first of your stories i've read, the prose was incredible. I can only imagine how much you must have worked on learning and refining it over the years. As an aspiring writer, the task of learning correct and interesting prose is a very daunting one. It almost seems like the quality on display here is out of reach. Lovely stuff! Do you have some sort of schooling or training? Or are you a professional author secretly on the side? Hah.
I would have to say my favorite entries were The Dream Palace, Fortress City, and The Driftwood Emperor. The interweaving of mystery, exploration of fantastical landscapes adhering to the fringes of Equestria, and smatterings of lore one must piece together like a puzzle as they read along lead to an engaging experience. The theme of historical repetition, how time turns all great civilizations to dust was a welcome surprise. I adore when stories have a distinct point to them.
Strangely, among the broader points, one of my favorite details was the mention of how in Derecho, the streets and houses were stripped clean due to being made of weaker clouds. This stuck out to me as a minor, but very crucial detail most folks might not think about, indicates the style of construction of the city well, and ties into facets of my little pony (ideas or details about building with clouds and such). I wish more stories would delve into such interesting depth with their interaction with the show and its world.
These entries held quite a bit of sadness too, as these places seemed quite beautiful, but are marked with some tragedy. If only we could explore these further ourselves, through an interactive program of some kind. The imagery is quite wonderful, and leaves a strong desire.
You can has review!
10494526
:D
Normally when I leave a review for a story, I like to be super-lengthy, and state as much as I can. But this time, I’m truly lost for words, and I know that by the time I’ve composed a review of that quality, some details of this fic, and the feeling of amazement I’m experiencing right now, will have faded. So, a short gush it is.
I’m regretting that I let this languish on my Read It Later for months, despite having read and liked several of Cold in Gardez’s five before, plus this one being praised to the moon and back by darn near everyone who’s read it. Because yes, it deserves that praise, and inspiring a dozen-solid other authors to try their own Lost Cities chapters, and encouraging many more to seriously consider doing so. I’m even feeling the urge right now!
The prose construction is truly excellent, and it needs to be, given this fic, lacking characters or a traditional plot, lives and dies on its delivery. Every word has been carefully polished and fussed over with a fine-toothed comb, to the point I could frequently spot places where even a single extra descriptive word could have substantially weakened a sentence. This is truly writing on the level of a traditionally published novel, 100%, as it is now (whereas most of thetime when that statement is made about a fic, it does mean with some more typical polish and edits along the way).
All sorts of emotions go through the reader’s head with each physical description of a lost city/tribe/kingdom/culture that is really telling us about said group of ponies, and using the understated ness of it to make it all the blunter. Right now, I would probably say the first chapter is the strongest, and that’s probably because it got to be the most impactful simply by being first, but everyone is a masterpiece on its own right, from the floating pegasus mountain to the underwater pony backstabbing to the city buried over a millennia in an encroaching jungle. Who knows which one will strike me the most next time I read this? Given they can be read in any order, months down the line, maybe I’ll start with the Everfree chapter and work backwards for the original four, followed by the extra three.
This has to be one of the most inspirational, beautiful, yet tragic in a strangely melancholy way, 11,000 words present on this site. The sequel’s first few chapters are instantly getting read, and this fic is instantly getting added to my highest bookshelf - the one for stories I reread more then once.
Sorry I didn’t talk more about the story’s actual content, but at this point, what is there to be said? Maybe next time I’ll write a review that does that properly. For now, Cold in Gardez, you’ll have to make do with yet another reviewer praising your magnum opus to the heavens. Hope that’s enough!
A Tv Tropes page is up as of today! It is also pulling double duty for Natural Histories.
*claps*
I don't think I've ever read a story quite like this, and although it's long finished, I'm definitely investigating your other works, hungry for more. Each short story sparked my imagination in a way I didn't quite think was possible. I stumbled upon this in the Anthology tag, and I'm very glad I read it. I hope you're doing well, author, and know that writings from seven years ago at the least are bringing inspiration and wonder to new readers like myself.
Perfect, a lot to be inspired by here. Thank you for this prose.
Been on my “to read” list for years. Absolutely stunning, some of the best writing and world-building I’ve ever seen in the fandom. Just a chilling and thought provoking experience with every single chapter. Very few stories have kept my attention like this.
Truly a masterpiece of world building. So much can be said about a civilization by the bones it leaves behind.
An oddball ghost happened across your fic and read it. Have a review!